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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Easy and informative, June 4, 2009
This review is from: A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (Paperback)
Some people get turned off by Horwitz's light, popular style; he mixes his history with his own travelogues as he follows its trail, which means that parts of his books are about crappy hotel rooms and weirdos. All that fluff conceals a careful, sober researcher, though; when you're done breezing through one of his books, you'll realize that you learned quite a bit after all. "A Voyage Long and Strange" covers the murky epoch between the original "discovery" of America and the 1620 Plymouth settlement, when men like Hernando de Soto and Cabeza de Vaca were wandering lost and starving through America, looking for gold and shooting everything else. Fascinating stuff.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Trail of Faded Footsteps, May 18, 2009
This review is from: A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (Paperback)
There are around 40 counties, towns and cities in the United States that are named after Christopher Columbus, an explorer who never set foot in what is today the U.S. Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Horwitz uses that fact to launch an exploration into the early adventurers on that vast landscape - including conquistadors, missionaries, pirates and brigands - through impeccable scholarship, humor and unique storytelling bolstered by his walking many of the areas that contain these faded footsteps in the dusty afterthought of history. The first European who should be feted for the feat "awarded" to Columbus is Ponce de Leon, who landed in Florida in 1513. And it was French Huguenots who were the first Protestants to escape religious persecution in Europe by landing near what is now Jacksonville, Florida, and building a fort. It certainly was a long and strange trip and one that has the twists and turns of incredible richness and drama. Horwitz brings those times back to life with vivid colors on a rich canvas that sheds light on the true facts and incredible fiction that continues to shape the debate on early America.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Full circle - Plymouth rock back to Plymouth rock, November 14, 2009
This review is from: A Voyage Long and Strange: On the Trail of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America (Paperback)
First off, I enjoy historical writings written by journalists because they tend to add a more personal touch to the prose, something often missing in the pedantic-academic style of many professors. And, same as Horwitz, I have found myself relearning much of what was `taught' and forgotten. Pulling out my old college text that covers American history from Columbus to 1877 - I see about 19 pages in the front chapter covering 1492 to 1640. I now remember not remembering, because in all practicality, most of the history I was "taught' was my own myth; it never happened. This book is fun because it's like a road trip the rest of us would love to take, but can't, so we follow Horwitz around America and enjoy his discovery of how "American's don't so much study history as shop for it". Our ancestors chased all sorts of myths, discovering and creating truth and fact, that over time either got forgotten or recreated into new myths by more people following them. Columbus chased the "India" myth, the Spanish chased the gold myth, and each myth became melded to the next. The gory awful historical truths laid out next to the endearing myths, makes all our `relearning' more balanced and ultimately something we can enjoy to replace the blank or inaccurate sound bites remembered from our grammar school and college days. Thank you Mr. Horwitz.
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